Fisheries Committee on March 24th, 2021

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

I knew that intimately. That was sort of my life and breath for about five years. I was one of the scientists who worked for the Salmon River Enhancement Society. We met with Ken Hardie and Terry Beech and did all sorts of stuff, at the end of the day. My understanding is that we were pushing for trenchless crossings of streams, so riparian vegetation on either bank of the stream and hardening of the banks is a really serious issue.

I had those calculations. It was in the hundreds of thousands of square meters; I don't have it off the top of my head. We were basically overruled. I presented as an evidentiary witness at the National Energy Board in Burnaby four or five years ago. It seems to have just been steamrolled over. Part of the issue, of course, is that the consultants were able to get away with what they said through the professional reliance model, which is another issue, but still part and parcel of this.

It's a big deal, in my view, but I think we just lost on that one.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I hate to give up.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

There's still a minute left, Ms. May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

If I'm not giving up, is anyone monitoring what kind of capacity the Canadian Energy Regulator—which used to be the National Energy Board—has? Are they monitoring to protect fish habitat in the construction of TMX?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

I've been away from it for about two years, but there was monitoring up to five years or maybe 10 years, I think. We said that the impacts related to the crossings needed to be measured 20 years or longer—or continuously. We used the Jasper, Alberta leg as an example. That had been done—I don't know—10 years earlier. The mitigation trees and shrubs were, like, that big. Most of them died. It still was problematic. The companies would say that they basically got this all signed off because they did what the government told them to do, but I don't think it was sufficient.

It goes back to my earlier talk. Capacity and understanding what constitutes habitat and how to repair it is still a really big issue. It loops back to the Trans Mountain pipeline project.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You're out of time, Ms. May. I'm sorry about that.

Before I move on, Mr. Calkins, do you have your hand raised?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

I just wanted to extend an invitation to Mr. Rosenau. If he looks at my profile picture on here, there's probably a couple of dozen pipelines that go right underneath that river I'm holding that beautiful cutthroat trout in. I'll be happy to show him where pipelines and rivers can meet up and do no harm.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Okay, no problem.

Mr. Zimmer, over to you for five minutes or less, please.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, again, to our witnesses. Everybody's been very informative, I think, to most of us.

One thing I will just make a comment about—it's been talked about in this conversation a bit—is climate change. It was a conversation I had with Brian Riddell—again, a former expert...well, not a former expert because he's still an expert on our salmon in B.C.—about the effects of climate change on the fish populations, specifically B.C. salmon, and the reality of that. I asked him this question: What do we do to fix this—not the climate change issue but the salmon problem in B.C.? I was asking about fish specifically. It's not something where we can wave a magic wand and two sentences later it's fixed. Again, I think it goes back to what Dr. Rosenau talked about, more of a commission-type of larger plan that looks over the long term.

While I still have some time, I want to talk to Dr. Di Cicco—and I hope I'm pronouncing your name right. We talked about fish farms and the like, and you talked about the negative effects in your opening statement. I've spoken with the Norwegian ambassador, as one country that does aquaculture, because I was looking into it. You know, there has to be a country that's doing this in a way that's potentially having less of an impact on our wild stocks.

I don't want to presume that you have this knowledge of aquaculture around the world, but are there countries around the world that do aquaculture well? If they do, what are some of the key things they do differently to do it successfully?

[Dr. Emiliano Di Cicco]

Well, one way to approach this is, for example, like Chile. I'm not sure that it's doing well, but it definitely has a different impact than what we have in B.C. because it doesn't have wild fish. In Chile's case, it's easier. I know, even from a public opinion perspective, that aquaculture is received in a better way there than in Norway—well, than in Europe, in general, and in B.C.

I would say that aquaculture operations have improved over the last few years—the last 10 or 20 years. They are definitely better than they were 20 years ago. However, there is a difference between being better and being sustainable, and I don't think we are there yet.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you.

Dr. Rosenau, based on the same question that I asked Dr. Di Cicco—and you had this question just before you ran out of time—what's a more ideal situation for aquaculture in B.C.? Are there nations around the world that do aquaculture better? If so, what do they do? What do they do differently from Canada that we can maybe learn from?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

I'm not aware of any. Certainly, I'm not exhaustive, but I keep in touch with the literature. It seems that wherever you have anadromous salmon or trout runs, there's always an impact. That's the sense I get. Chile doesn't have anadromous salmon runs that are natural. In fact, these are escapees that now run into the rivers from the fish farms, and eventually they naturalize.

I cannot come up with any positive answer for you.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Okay. Thank you for that.

With regard to the conversation I had with the Norwegian ambassador to Canada about this, what he told me was that the aquaculture industry started, similarly, 40 years ago—this is what I heard anyway—but that they have always had this constant of advancing their technology. They're looking at putting these pens further out into deeper waters so that the effects of the food falling through the nets are less impactful. To me, something that we should probably look at as a nation is whether there are countries doing this better and what they are doing. Then, obviously, we should implement that in our country.

I have just one last comment, maybe for Dr. Rosenau because we talked about a mutual friend of ours, Dean Werk.

One thing I am concerned about in some of these actions of the minister is the effects on those people who are actually the environmental stewards on the water. Dean is one of them. He's the one who is actually out there. I was with him; we were doing some sturgeon research on the water as part of that program. It's been a very successful program. That's why we still have sturgeon today. There are sturgeon there that are older than Confederation, some of them. That's how old they are, as you know.

What can we do to better support those environmental stewards—the ones who are going out there and who might fish with fishing rods during the week but are out on the weekend? They're picking up garbage along the stream, or they're helping remediate streams and restore the habitat that we just talked about that's been lost in some cases. How do we better help those volunteers do more of that? To me, it seems like it would be a great investment. Have you any thoughts on that?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

I work quite closely with one of my former students who is a community adviser. He's a DFO employee now and he connects with these local stewardship groups. A lot of them are running shoestring operations.

We closed down the Vedder River gravel removal, which was a nonsensical thing for flood protection by the City of Chilliwack this last summer. I probably spent two weeks analyzing the data. When we presented the data to the agencies, including DFO, they said we knew that stuff way better than they did. Eventually, it was so embarrassing they pulled it.

One of the things that stewardship groups can benefit from probably is some funding, but the other thing is going back and giving capacity to your own line staff, opening back up those offices. Those feet on the ground are really super important. They are the people I teach in my classes.

Support feet on the ground and they can interact with the local stewardship groups.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you for that.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You've gone way over.

Mr. Hardie, we'll go to you for five minutes or less, please.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you again, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Di Cicco, you mentioned earlier that the situation with plankton out in the deep ocean was also affecting shrimp. The other thing, of course, that salmon eat is herring, and we've seen some stress on herring stocks as well. What's going on there?

[Dr. Emiliano Di Cicco]

Herring feed on shrimp, so the chain is there.

We just finished the herring spawning season right now, and definitely, fishing for that herring is not helpful in trying to rebuild the stock. That's definitely one thing to take into consideration, and the environmental conditions don't help these fish to feed and thrive either.

There are quite a few factors that should be taken into account as to why the herring is not doing great in the Pacific Ocean for now.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Is there anything that we can do anything about?

[Dr. Emiliano Di Cicco]

As I said, avoid fishing for them, or regulate that in a way that will preserve the stock that we have. That will help. That's something on an anthropogenic level.

It's tough to regulate the temperature of the ocean. It's definitely easier to regulate how many of them we catch for our purposes.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Dr. Rosenau, I'm sorry. I was calling you Mr. Rosenau, but I will give you your proper title.

When we were discussing, basically, the fix for the Big Bar slide, we got into quite a discussion about hatcheries and their impact on the wild salmon stocks, and there was a good discussion about a proper strategy toward hatcheries, particularly up-country, up both the Thompson and the Fraser river systems.

What do you have to say about how hatcheries actually should be employed to rebuild salmon stocks?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

Well, I'm not a fan of hatcheries. A lot of my mortgage was paid for by my former partner, who was a hatchery manager, and a lot of my students get jobs in both federal and provincial hatcheries. However, I think you have to be very careful about hatcheries.

Going back to what I would like to have said on one of your earlier questions, if you take the fish farms out, I think you would have an instantaneous response, and the need for hatcheries would almost be non-existent. I think the response would be that crucial.

In the case of Big Bar, when you have the potential to lose the last genetic material, hatcheries sometimes are very important from a conservation perspective. Up in the Nechako, I've worked—in a federal court case with Rio Tinto—on flows and stuff like that. Without the sturgeon hatchery, that population would probably collapse to extinction.

There are these weird balances. It's not a “yes, hatcheries are great” or “no, hatcheries should never be used”, but in my opinion, you have to be really careful about it. Particularly in the interior stocks, yes, you might have to do it if Big Bar isn't completely rectified.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Is there deep ocean conflict between hatchery fish and wild fish?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

In regard to the science, some of the stuff out of SFU, by Randall Peterman, suggests that yes, there is competition. The Alaskans putting out jillions of pink salmon affects chum salmon, which also overlap in terms of feeding.

Out in open ocean, there can be potential impacts, but that's something that I think scientists haven't really figured out to that detail yet.